At the heart of the controversy in these cases are those recurring pregnancies
that pose no danger whatsoever to the life or health of the mother but
are, nevertheless, unwanted for any one or more of a variety of reasons
-- convenience, family planning, economics, dislike of children, the embarrassment
of illegitimacy, etc. The common claim before us is that, for any one of
such reasons, or for no reason at all, and without asserting or claiming
any threat to life or health, any woman is entitled to an abortion at her
request if she is able to find a medical advisor willing to undertake the
procedure.

The Court, for the most part, sustains this position: during the period
prior to the time the fetus becomes viable, the Constitution of the United
States values the convenience, whim, or caprice of the putative mother
more than the life or potential life of the fetus; the Constitution, therefore,
guarantees the right to an abortion as against any state law or policy
seeking to protect the fetus from an abortion not prompted by more compelling
reasons of the mother.

With all due respect, I dissent. I find nothing in the language or history
of the Constitution to support the Court's judgment. The Court simply fashions
and announces a new constitutional right for pregnant mothers and, with scarcely any reason or authority for its action, invests
that right with sufficient substance to override most existing state abortion
statutes. The upshot is that the people and the legislatures of the 50
States are constitutionally dissentitled to weigh the relative importance
of the continued existence and development of the fetus, on the one hand,
against a spectrum of possible impacts on the mother, on the other hand.
As an exercise of raw judicial power, the Court perhaps has authority to
do what it does today; but, in my view, its judgment is an improvident
and extravagant exercise of the power of judicial review that the Constitution
extends to this Court.

The Court apparently values the convenience of the pregnant mother more
than the continued existence and development of the life or potential life
that she carries. Whether or not I might agree with that marshaling of
values, I can in no event join the Court's judgment because I find no constitutional
warrant for imposing such an order of priorities on the people and legislatures
of the States. In a sensitive area such as this, involving as it does issues
over which reasonable men may easily and heatedly differ, I cannot accept
the Court's exercise of its clear power of choice by interposing a constitutional
barrier to state efforts to protect human life and by investing mothers
and doctors with the constitutionally protected right to exterminate it.
This issue, for the most part, should be left with the people and to the
political processes the people have devised to govern their affairs.

It is my view, therefore, that the Texas statute is not constitutionally
infirm because it denies abortions to those who seek to serve only their
convenience, rather than to protect their life or health. Nor is this plaintiff,
who claims no threat to her mental or physical health, entitled to assert
the possible rights of those women whose pregnancy assertedly
implicates their health. This, together with United States v. Vuitch,
402 U.S. 62 (1971), dictates reversal of the judgment of the District Court.

Likewise, because Georgia may constitutionally forbid abortions to putative
mothers who, like the plaintiff in this case, do not fall within the reach
of § 26-1202(a) of its criminal code, I have no occasion, and the
District Court had none, to consider the constitutionality of the procedural
requirements of the Georgia statute as applied to those pregnancies posing
substantial hazards to either life or health. I would reverse the judgment
of the District Court in the Georgia case.